My pouch in my fist, and I’ll drink without guile;
My pot at my back set after the new mode:
To my pot and my pouch I will have justice done,
For none shall drink without putting in as much again.
We were entertained at Wilton, the noble seat of the great earl of Pembroke; and deservedly may I style it the School of Athens. The glories of this place I shall endeavour to rehearse in a separate discourse.
Crekelade, probably a Roman town upon the Thames; for from this a very plain Roman road runs to Cirencester. Much has been the dispute formerly about a fancied university in this place, and the little town in its neighbourhood Latin, which it would be senseless only to repeat. The word Crekelade is derived from the cray-fishes in the river: Lade is no more than a water-course, but more especially such a one as is made by art;[48] and we here find the river pent up for a long way together by factitious banks, in order the better to supply their mills: so Latin is no more than ladeings, or the meadows where these channels run. Ledencourt, near Newent, Glocestershire, I suppose, acknowledges the like original; and many more. The town of Lechelade falls under the same predicament: leche signifies a watery place subject to inundations; as Leach, a town near Boston before mentioned, anciently written Leche: as Camden says of Northleach, p. 240. and Litchfield hence fetches its etymology from the marshy bog that environs the church, rather than the superstitious notion there current. Not far hence are two towns called Sarney and Sarncote, from the Roman causeway; sarn in Welsh importing a paved way. There is another upon the same road between Cirencester and Glocester.
Corinium. Dobunorum
Cirencester was anciently the Corinium of the Romans, a great and populous city, built upon the intersection of this road we have been traveling, and the great Foss road going to the Bath: it was inclosed with walls and a ditch of a vast compass, which I traced quite round. Under the north-east side of the wall runs the river Churn, whence the names of the town: the foundation of the wall is all along visible; the ditch is so where that is quite erased.
————sic omnia fatis
In pejus ruere ac retro sublapsa referri.Virg. G. i.